What is the Center for the Environment & Welfare? Although it bills itself as a “think tank for animals and the planet,” it’s really a dark money–funded misinformation campaign scheming to protect animal-abusing industries from regulation and change.
Dig just a little and here’s what you’ll find:
1. The Center for the Environment and Welfare Has No History or Authority
The Center for the Environment and Welfare’s website only came online this April, but within days of its launch, it had posted several data sheets, “activist profiles,” and news releases.
The organization claims that its goal is to distinguish “good policy” from “window dressing,” but that’s dishonest at best. It actually focuses almost entirely on smearing PETA and other animal protection groups. In what it purports to be research, the Center for the Environment & Welfare reaches intellectually dishonest conclusions—such as that mother pigs prefer being imprisoned in gestation creates over having freedom—based on deeply flawed studies
If you think the Center for the Environment & Welfare smells like a rotten PR campaign, you’re right.
2. We’ve Heard This Somewhere Before
All the Center for the Environment and Welfare’s targets and stances are suspiciously similar to those of the Center for Consumer Freedom, the dark money–funded corporation started by infamous lobbyist Rick Berman through his for-profit PR company, Berman and Company, the portfolio of which speaks for itself: The firm only represents industries that profit from exploiting and killing animals and abusing and destroying the environment.
The entire model for how the Center for the Environment & Welfare—a slapdash front group for animal-abusing industries—operates is the worn-out tactic used by Berman and Company, which has established over 30 shell nonprofits just like itself. The Center for the Environment & Welfare’s executive director, Jack Hubbard, has worked with Berman and Company since 2007.
Why do Rick Berman, Jack Hubbard, and Berman and Company take this approach? They use their nonprofits to manufacture public consent and manipulate government policy for those who wish to remain in the shadows. PETA entities, on the other hand, constitute a global movement that’s 9 million strong—people who stand up for animals, take direct action, and live by their principles. Who would you trust?
3. Its Director Doesn’t Care About Animals or the Environment
Jack Hubbard spent six years in the C-suite at American Humane, the rubber-stamping committee that has repeatedly failed to protect animals in the industries it’s supposed to monitor. American Humane has certified abusive meat, egg and dairy producers as well as the Miami Seaquarium, which has kept the orca Lolita in the smallest orca tank in the world for more than 50 years.
He’s also in the industry’s pocket. Hubbard held board and council positions with egg and dairy lobbying groups. He’s on record vying for oil executives’ money in exchange for reputation laundering. He even wrote a recent essay demonizing Greta Thunberg for her visionary climate activism, which has sparked a generation into defending the Earth.
4. The Center for Environment and Welfare Plays Dirty.
The Center for the Environment and Welfare represents industries that benefit from hurting and killing animals for profit and has a financial interest in propagating misinformation about PETA’s efforts to help animals.
PETA provides end-of-life services for sick or dying animals whose guardians can’t afford to pay for them to be euthanized as well as for animals who are elderly, feral, suffering, aggressive, or otherwise unadoptable.
In contrast, animal shelters with “no-kill” policies, including the municipal shelter near PETA’s headquarters, often turn away animals they deem unadoptable or when they reach capacity. We take in all comers without discrimination, admission fees, appointments, waiting lists, or other obstacles, and we operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
What PETA’s Doing About It
The Center for the Environment and Welfare fights to keep animals suffering and keep the world burning—anything in service of Hubbard’s clients. While Hubbard and his pathetic excuse for a nonprofit attempt to obstruct the truth about our work, PETA will be here—working and winning for animals, just as we always have.
Read More About Berman and Company’s Sham Nonprofits
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